Improving Life at 3017: The HacKLN 2017 Finals

Organized by the Department of Statistics and Computer Science, University of Kelaniya, and held at the Dialog Iconic building, the final round of HacKLN 2017 took place on the 12th of November. When we last were at HacKLN 2017, we saw 24 teams competing for a place in the top 12, to go on to the final rounds. From these 12 teams, only three would emerge victorious at HacKLN 2017.

Since the semi-final round, these 12 finalists were aided by a panel of 7 mentors who worked with the team to identify their strengths, weaknesses and new opportunities that the team might have missed. The mentors were:

Alagan Mahalingam

Chamath Palihawadana

Gayan Pathirage

Inosh Goonewardena

Jerome Samarasinge

Krishantha Dinesh

Pasindu De Silva

The theme of the hackathon was “What would you do in 2017 to improve life at 3017”. Each team would present a product or service that they felt would be of use even a thousand years from now. They would also to tweak their products to add new features and to tie up any loose ends they may have.

Kicking off on the 11th of November 2017, the 12 teams gathered at the auditorium for 12 hours where they would prepare for their final presentation. Each team would be allowed 5 minutes for presentation and followed by 5 minutes for a Q&A. The teams and their respective products would be judged on criteria such as how the idea relates to the theme, the innovativeness of the product/solution, the timing of the presentation, and teamwork.

First up at HacKLN 2017 was Team Nexus

Mentor: Pasindu De Silva

Team Nexus presenting Bruum

Their product, Bruum is a virtual vehicle sales assistant. By scanning a QR code, view demos of the car via augmented reality and then proceed to purchase the vehicle if you’re happy with it. The app would be on the Google Play Store and Apple Store as well. The ultimate goal of the team is to have a collection of data about the preferences of cars and the identification of market trends. This data could then be sold to market analysts etc.

Team Kavalens

Mentor: Gayan Pathirage

Team Kavalens presenting tEye

They present tEye. This is a device to measure the current status of the environment. It uses a sensor module linked to a mobile app to check details about how clean the air, earth and water is. Ideal for environmentalist, natural scientists and even those who are travelling. The data that is collected here would again be marketed to those in the field. The team calls tEye a social service as people would learn to protect the environment.

Team Aparecium Labs

Mentor: Krishantha Dinesh

Team Aparecium Labs presenting Safe Plant

The team’s product, Safe Plant is a wearable device that monitors heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, calories burned, footsteps and also has an SOS button. It is targeted to those ailing from kidney disease. The device would connect to a patient’ smartphone via Bluetooth. The products would be available for purchase from their website. Following their initial goal of selling 5000 units by 2019, their extended goal is to sell 75,000 units by the year 2023.

Team Riuscita

Mentor: Pasindu De Silva

Team Riuscita presenting Lec Buddy

Their product, Lec Buddy has two components. One is a smart note taking assistant and the other is a smart videographer. The smart note taking assistant has the ability to capture the handwriting of the lecturer and convert it to a text using optical character recognition. The smart videographer would take videos of the lecture so that the student can go back and view it if needed. In terms of additional features, the team is also planning to implement a Smartwatch to the products which can control the vision of the lecturer.

Team Solutia

Mentor: Alagan Mahalingam

Team Solutia presenting a Human tracking smart fan

Their product, a human tracking smart fan is just what the name suggests. A fan that would rotate based on the movement of the person in the room. When a person enters a room, the fan would detect it and track the person as he/she moves. If the person moves out of the room, the fan would switch itself off to save power. If multiple people are in the room and they want different speeds, the fan would adjust accordingly giving them two different rotation speeds. One point that the Judges noted was to rather than creating a new device, it would be considered more feasible to implement a device that can be used with existing fans.

Team Return Zero

Mentor: Gayan Pathirage

Team Return Zero presenting Cook Mate

Their product is Cook Mate, a cook’s companion. This is an AI platform that uses machine learning to calculate exactly how much food needs to be prepared for an event. It takes into account factors such as the type of event and how many people would be attending the event.

Team Castle Black

Mentor: Alagan Mahalingam

Team Castle Black presenting a Child bicycle tracking system

Their product was an automated bicycle tracking system for parents who have children. The device can be hooked up to a bicycle. Once done, it can track the location and speed of the bicycle so that a parent knows where their child is and how fast they’re cycling. It would also generate an alarm to both the rider and parent if the bicycle has met with an accident. The team has also added the calling functionality so that a child can take a call to an emergency contact and the parent can contact the child as well.

Team Erudites

Mentor: Jerome Samarasinghe

Team Erudites presenting Smart A/C controller

Their product, Smart A/C Controller 1.0 can control the temperature of an air conditioning unit. If two or more people are present in the room, they can each launch the app and set their preferred temperature. The app will then decide the average temperature and adjust the air conditioning unit accordingly.

Team Syntax

Mentor: Inosh Goonawardena

Team Syntax presenting Virtual Medic Simulator

Called a Virtual Medic Simulator, their system simulates an operation theater using a combination of augmented reality and virtual reality. By making use of a VR headset coupled with a leap motion, the system can be used to train surgeons to perform even the most complex of surgeries.

Team InfinitiaLK

Mentor: Chamath Palihawadana

Team InfinitiaLK presenting iHypeNG

Their product, iHypeNG aims to revolutionize advertising. By using augmented reality, they plan to advertise products that you can interact with and even play games with. All you have to do is to take out your phone, point it at an ad that was created by them and then you have a fully interactive experience at your fingertips.

Team Undefined Byte Packets

Mentor: Inosh Goonawardena

Their product is Blindsake. Aimed at helping the visually impaired live better lives, the device is a pair of glasses that utilizes Computer vision and Microsoft cognitive services and ABS API from IdeaMart. It can detect emotions from one or more people and even alert the wearer of objects such as vehicles and obstructions. It can also read text from computer screens and papers and play it out.

Team FitMe

Mentor: Chamath Palihawadana

Team FitMe presenting FitMe

The team wants their users to live a healthy life. They want to achieve this by means of a virtual pet whom the users can feed. They engage users to remind them to eat at the right time and work out at the right time as well. The app has a level of gamification added to it by a leaderboard where the user can track their calorie burn. By snapping a picture of what you’re eating, they would use Google Vision to track a number of calories in the food to see if it’s healthy or not. Eat something unhealthy or eat at the wrong time, and your pet gets fat.

That was the end to the presentations at HacKLN 2017

Following the presentations, the judges, mentors, teams and others were all invited for lunch. While the others indulged in lunch, the judges put their thinking caps on to calculate the scores. The top three teams would receive a cash prize of LKR 50,000, LKR 30,000 and LKR 20,000 respectively for placing 1st,2nd or 3rd.

And the winners of HacKLN 2017 were

3rd Place: Team Syntax

2nd Place: Team Aparecium Labs

1st Place: Team Castle Black

The Winners of HacKLN 2017

With that, HacKLN 2017 came to a close

With the closing vote of thanks being delivered by Tharindu Cyril Weerasooriya. HacKLN2017 drew to an end. Certificates of participation were handed out to all who took part. As the event ended, we couldn’t help but wonder what the future would have in store for us. Here’s to HacKLN 2018.